Old Rules
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Rickdrea, short. S1, Ep3, "Guts". Rick wasn't entirely sure the old rules of the world still applied.


**AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Rick didn't know what to think. Part of him still wanted, desperately, to believe that this was all some kind of nightmare. It was some kind of hallucinatory dream that came from something they gave him to fight infection or to deaden the pain that the bullet wound inflicted. His mind, in contemplating his own death and his hope for life, had stirred up some nightmarish creatures to haunt him that were neither alive nor dead. They were caught, suspended, somewhere in between an old world and a new one.

The days that he'd spent, though, walking around in this would-be nightmare made him believe that it couldn't be a dream. He wasn't moving through them quickly enough. He was in touch with too many sensations. Dreams usually didn't work this way, even if they were vivid. He'd spent too long in this dream without developing a single magical ability or finding anything beyond the living dead that he couldn't explain.

 _This was real._

He was clinging to the belief that, somehow, if it was real, he was going to find Lori and Carl. They were alive somewhere, or at least they had been when they'd left King County. He didn't want to give up on them. He didn't want to believe that they couldn't be alive.

But it was harder and harder to hope that they were.

Standing in the department store, right now, he could see the Dead outside—fighting their way in—and he couldn't imagine Carl face to face with them. He was only a boy. There'd be nothing he could do to survive if he had to face them. He couldn't imagine Lori fighting them off, even though he was sure that she would try, when she was a woman that would call him to handle everything from a spider to a mouse.

He didn't want to count them out, but part of him couldn't help it. After all, he wasn't even sure that he was going to get out of this store. It wasn't that hard to get in over your head. It never had been, but it was especially easy now.

 _Somehow Andrea had survived. Even though she didn't know how the safety of her gun worked, she'd survived. And, apparently, she'd done so without the need to ever even fire the weapon._

Rick searched the blonde for something there that might be a testament into how she'd made it this far. He wondered if he might find, in her, something that would convince him that Lori might have survived this long.

But already he could tell that they were cut from different cloth. He could feel that they weren't exactly the same kind of woman. He knew he wouldn't find anything there that told him anything about the possible fate of his wife.

If Lori was gone, what would he do for the rest of his life—assuming that he even had a life to speak of? He wasn't entirely sure, after all, that they would ever get out of here. Every moment that they spent looking for an escape it seemed that the Dead got closer to reaching them. Everywhere they turned, looking for a way out, they seemed only to find dead ends. There may not be a life beyond the next fifteen or twenty minutes.

Rick looked back to Andrea as she stood admiring a necklace that hung delicately on her fingertips.

"You see something you like?" Rick asked.

His stomach did an odd sort of flip—the kind that he hadn't felt for some time. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to pay it any attention. He wanted to pretend he hadn't felt it. Because the last time he'd felt something like that was when he'd been flirting with Lori—and he'd known exactly what he was doing.

Maybe he knew what he was doing now, even if he knew it wasn't the right place, it certainly wasn't the right time and, at least in theory, he was still a married man.

 _Because the voice in his mind said he may have found something that he liked, no matter how inappropriate such a thought might be. And the voice also hoped, even if he wasn't sure why, that Andrea might see something that appealed to her._

Andrea looked surprised to hear him talking to her again. She'd calmed since their earlier clash over his entrance into the city and into the department store. She smiled at him.

"No, not me," she said. Rick's stomach sank. She wasn't even aware of his thoughts. She wasn't responding to him in the slightest way on a personal level. She was talking about nothing more than the chain that hung on her fingertips. There was no hidden agenda to her words. Yet, still, they made his stomach sink enough that he could barely listen to the words that she spoke about her sister, her voice taking on a soft and sweet quality as she spoke with fondness of the woman who must be, as Andrea put it, still "such a kid."

Andrea didn't know that Rick, with an over-active mind and too much stirring up his thoughts to simply stand and be quiet, was already thinking entirely ludicrous thoughts about a life that was entirely outside of their reality. He was already, although nowhere near the realm of reality, wondering about the possibility of getting to know her better in a calm environment. He was fighting with himself because the thoughts made him feel guilty, but he couldn't stop them. He could only excuse them away with the fact that they were just thoughts.

Just thoughts—he hadn't cheated on his wife. He hadn't done anything wrong. He was just thinking. Daydreaming, really. He was just passing the time and distracting his mind from what might be to come in the next few moments.

He had no reason to feel guilty.

"Why not take it?" Rick asked, noticing that Andrea still held the necklace with some fondness—as though she might have purchased it if only a clerk had appeared to allow her to pay for the item.

"There's a cop staring at me," she said, rolling her eyes at him and offering a smile. It was a nice smile. Rick could ignore the fluttering in his stomach that it caused—but not entirely. "Would it be considered looting?" She asked with a conflicted tone to her words.

She was asking him for his opinion. Would it be wrong to do something that she knew—in a world not too distantly removed from them—was wrong? Would it be wrong to give into her desire to have something, even if it meant that she was committing some kind of crime according to old laws?

It was different, very different in fact, from Rick's own struggle, but there were some elements that were the same.

Rick asked himself the same question. He wasn't sure of his own answer, but he couldn't leave Andrea hanging and waiting for a reply. He gave her the most honest opinion that he could formulate, for himself, at the moment.

"Don't think those rules apply anymore, do you?" He asked.

In response, she took the necklace off its stand. With a little encouragement, and maybe with a little permission, she clearly didn't think the old rules applied. There wasn't any place for them now.

And, maybe, Rick agreed with her.


End file.
